Next up in our Casual Connect USA gaming coverage are two titles from an established Windows Phone developer. Earlier this year, Handy Games (one of Germany’s largest mobile game studios) jumped onto our platform with two impressive Windows Phone 8 titles: Epic Battle Dude – a “one-dimensional“ casual RPG and Aces of Luftwaffe – a vertically-scrolling shoot-em-up. Both are great games (especially Aces) and both are free to play.

So what does the studio have in store for us next? Quite a lot, it turns out. Christopher Kassulke, CEO and owner of Handy Games revealed to us the next two games in the pipeline for Windows Phone 8: 1941: Frozen Front and Townsmen. We were in town for a casual games conference, but both games looked deeper and more fully featured than the average casual title. Get the full scoop in our video after the break!

1941: Frozen Front

Windows Phone already has a handful of quality strategy titles, including Armed! and Great Big War Game. But we don’t have a historical themed hex- and turn-based strategy game just yet. Frozen Front takes place in the early days of World War II, though it uses the war as a jumping off point rather than focusing on specific battles gone by.

Players begin each mission with a variety of units: infantry, tanks, artillery, planes, and more. You’ll move each unit across the map’s hex grid, uncovering the fog of war as you search for the enemy. Each unit gets one attack per turn, so you’ll need to consider whether it will survive an attack (the game tells you how much damage both sides will take) before assaulting an enemy unit.

Killing enemies gets you gold which can then be spent on new units and more. Complete missions skillfully to earn a gold bonus too. Or you can buy gold as an In-App Purchase (IAP); all of Handy Game’s titles are free to play. And you never have to buy gold if you don’t want to. Strategy fans can complete the entire game without making a purchase.

1941: Frozen Front will also support pass-and-play multiplayer at launch. Online multiplayer might be added in a future update

Townsmen

This one is the seventh installment in the long-running Townsmen series of city building games. Don’t confuse it with games like Ice Age Village. Townsmen has much more in common with the Settlers or Sim City games.

Players will create a small medieval town and control all aspects of its growth and infrastructure. Build homes for villagers, places for them to work, and roads to connect everything together. The game operates on a seasonal cycle. Corn won’t grow in the winter, so you’ll need to stockpile it earlier in the year. Homes and buildings require repairs otherwise they might catch on fire. If your citizens aren’t happy, they won’t pay their taxes. Then how will you build and expand your town?

Buildings do take time to create and produce resources, which creates an incentive to check in with the game throughout the day. You can hurry things along by spending Prestige Points you earn or buy via IAP. But Townsmen is a game you’re meant to play for long periods of time instead of just collecting resources and running, so it will be quite a bit more engaging than Farmville-style games.

1941: Frozen Front and Townsmen will both be free to play when they arrive on Windows Phone 8 later this year. In the meantime, here are links for the first two titles from Handy Games:

I hate free to play games with a passion but these two games might implement it slightly better than most. Free to play games ruin immersion because they make you think about real world money to continue to play.

I'm not a big fan of strategy games but they seem to be very popular with the masses so I'm glad to see them come aboard no doubt. I'm more of a shooter gamer, 1st or 3rd person. We definitely need to see more of these types of titles come to the platform, although we do have a nice selection already there is a lot more out there that could come this way. Gaming definitely seems to be getting better all be it slowly in quality and quantity. This is very exciting times for Windows platform.

Both games look interesting, allthough Townsmen does not seem like my type of game.

I like the gameplay of Frozen Front, reminds me a bit of civilization. The graphics themselves look nice, I just think the animations could use a little bit of fine tuning (make vehicles not move/drive sideways).

Either way, my wishlist is a "Rollercoaster Tycoon" like game for Windows Phone and/or Windows 8/RT. I know I can run RCT2 on my Acer Icona W510, but it's not suited for touchscreen controls.